India bans 'Nehru and Mountbatten love scenes' from film

The Indian government has ordered that love scenes between characters based on its first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Edwina Mountbatten, the wife of Britain's last Viceroy, be deleted from a new Hollywood film of their romance.

Officials revealed they had given permission for the film Indian Summer, starring Hugh Grant and Cate Blanchett, to be filmed on location in India on the condition that scenes showing the couple in bed, kissing, and dancing, are deleted.

Another in which Nehru declares his love for Lady Mountbatten is also understood to have been deleted.

The film, which is due for release in 2011, is based on Alex Von Tunzelmann's book Indian Summer, The Secret History of the End of Empire, which tells the story of Nehru and Lady Mountbatten's "intense and clandestine love affair" during the Mountbattens' return to India for the handover and partition in 1947.